Asian shares drift lower, focus on China liquidity

By Chikako Mogi

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares slipped further on Tuesday and investors braced for more volatility in Chinese markets as worries spread that tight liquidity could impede China's economic growth and take the shine off an emerging U.S. recovery.

Japan's Nikkei stock average <.n225> opened up 0.1 percent but quickly gave up early gains and fell 0.7 percent. <.t/>

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> eased 0.1 percent after shedding 1.8 percent to its lowest since early September the previous day.

"Volatility will rule the market today. The market is more than ripe for a technical rebound, but this probably won't happen as sentiment has deteriorated badly," said Ko Seung-hee, a market analyst at SK Securities, of Seoul shares.

Australian shares <.axjo> fell 0.2 percent on concerns about economic and financial instability in China, its main export market, while South Korean shares <.ks11> opened down 0.5 percent to a fresh 11-month low.

China shares suffered their worst daily loss in almost four years on Monday as the authorities showed more determination to curb the risks of shadow banking than accommodating the money market, raising fears of a potential credit squeeze.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index <.hsi> closed below the 20,000-point mark for the first time since September 11. and the Shanghai financial sub-index <.ssefn> skidded 7.3 percent in its worst day since November 2008 - during the financial crisis that started that year.

The sell-off sent most of the region's stock indexes well into oversold territory, with most Southeast Asian stocks falling to multi-month lows on Monday, where investor sentiment had already been hurt since the U.S. Federal Reserve said last week it would scale back its stimulus.

DOLLAR TAKES BREAK

Less than a week after the Fed set off a global market sell-off by announcing its intent to scale back stimulus, two Fed leaders - Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota and the head of the Dallas Fed Richard Fisher - downplayed an imminent end to monetary stimulus on Monday and said the acute market reaction was not yet cause for concern.

The dollar's rally slowed on the comments. It has been gaining on rising U.S. yields and the prospect of an improving U.S. economy that has let the Fed to hint at toning down its aggressive bond-buying scheme, which had channeled abundant funds to global markets and underpinned risk asset prices.

The dollar index <.dxy>, measured against a basket of major currencies, was down 0.04 percent at 82.390, after rising to a three-week high of 82.841 on Monday.

The shift out of assets that have benefited most from cheap money has been sharpest in the U.S. debt market, where yields on 10-year Treasury notes at one point spiked to a two-year high of 2.67 percent but dipped to 2.55 percent on Monday on recovering bond prices, which move in opposite direction to yields.

U.S. equities slumped but recovered some losses on the rise in Treasury bond prices, while the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index <.fteu3> closed at a seven-month low on Monday. The Euro STOXX 50 Volatility index <.v2tx> hit a nine-month high, reflecting a sharp rise in risk aversion among investors.

U.S. crude futures were down 0.4 percent to $94.83 a barrel.

(Additional reporting by Jungyoun Park in Seoul; Editing by Eric Meijer)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/treasuries-shares-resuscitate-fed-still-weighs-003515087.html

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Report: Economic well-being of US children slips

FILE- In this Feb. 3, 2010 file photo, students eat lunch at Sharon Elementary School in Sharon, Vt. Vermont ranks second in the country in an annual report of kids? well-being. The Annie E. Casey Foundation?s Kids Count report released Monday shows improvements in eight areas like in the percentage of children with health insurance and fewer teen births but poverty continues to be a problem. Vermont fell slightly in the percentage of children with parents who lack secure employment to 29 percent. New Hampshire was the top-ranked state, followed by Vermont and Massachusetts. Nevada, Mississippi and New Mexico took the bottom three spots. Overall, Vermont ranked third in the country in education and family and community and fourth in health. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot)

FILE- In this Feb. 3, 2010 file photo, students eat lunch at Sharon Elementary School in Sharon, Vt. Vermont ranks second in the country in an annual report of kids? well-being. The Annie E. Casey Foundation?s Kids Count report released Monday shows improvements in eight areas like in the percentage of children with health insurance and fewer teen births but poverty continues to be a problem. Vermont fell slightly in the percentage of children with parents who lack secure employment to 29 percent. New Hampshire was the top-ranked state, followed by Vermont and Massachusetts. Nevada, Mississippi and New Mexico took the bottom three spots. Overall, Vermont ranked third in the country in education and family and community and fourth in health. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot)

This June 20, 2013 image shows William Roper holding his 4-year-old son William Jr. and 2-year-old daughter Kacie during an interview at Joy Junction homeless shelter in Albuquerque, N.M. A report released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows the number of children living in poverty increased to 23 percent in 2011. The survey ranks New Mexico as the worst in the nation when it comes to child well-being. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)

This Friday June 21, 2013 photo shows Kirsten Oschwald, left, and a group of her students volunteering by putting labels on canned food at the Roadrunner Food Bank in Albuquerque, N.M. The food bank distributes about 90,000 pounds of food to organizations that help low-income families. An annual survey released Monday, June 24, by the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows the number of children living in poverty increased to 23 percent in 2011. The survey ranks New Mexico as the worst in the nation when it comes to child well-being. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)

This June 20, 2013 image shows David Hutchinson and his daughter Navaeh posing for a photograph at Joy Junction homeless shelter in Albuquerque, N.M. An annual survey released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows the number of children living in poverty increased to 23 percent in 2011. The survey ranks New Mexico as the worst in the nation when it comes to child well-being. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)

This June 21, 2013 image shows a map at Roadrunner Food Bank in Albuquerque, N.M., that depicts food distribution points across New Mexico. An annual survey released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows the number of children living in poverty increased to 23 percent in 2011. The survey ranks New Mexico as the worst in the nation when it comes to child well-being. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) ? It wasn't so long ago that David Hutchinson spent a month sleeping under a bridge while his wife and young daughter spent their nights at a domestic violence shelter.

But this wasn't a case of domestic violence. The couple simply had no choice. There were just no shelters in Phoenix with room for another homeless family, and their top priority was finding a safe place for their daughter.

The family is one of many in the U.S. that have been trying to raise children in the face of joblessness and homelessness. An annual survey released Monday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation shows the number of children living in poverty increased to 23 percent in 2011, after the recession.

The Southwest has been hit particularly hard. New Mexico, for the first time, has slipped to worst in the nation when it comes to child well-being. More than 30 percent of children in the state were living in poverty in 2011 and nearly two-fifths had parents who lacked secure employment, according to this year's Kids Count survey.

Nevada is ranked No. 48, followed by Arizona. Mississippi, which has traditionally held last place, made slight improvements in early childhood education while reading and math proficiency for some students increased, putting the state at No. 49.

Overall, the report shows there have been gains in education and health nationally, but since 2005, there have been serious setbacks when it comes to the economic well-being of children.

"There's little doubt that things are getting worse," said Kim Posich, executive director of the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty. "Aside from the fact the New Mexico economy has been so slow to turn around, the systems that generally serve people who are the working poor and suddenly lose their jobs or face greater hardship, all those systems have been strained beyond the max."

In Arizona, charities and government programs were cut during the recession, making it more difficult for families to get by and rebuild, said Dana Wolfe Naimark of the Children's Action Alliance in Phoenix.

"So many things were slashed just when people needed it the most," she said. "That is a key policy issue that we do have choices over. We can find ways to rebuild that investment. It's not OK to just throw up our hands and say, 'We can't.'"

According to the Kids Count report, a lingering concern is the effect of unemployment on children, particularly long-term unemployment. Researchers found that more than 4 million workers were unemployed for more than six months, and more than 3 million were without work for a year or more.

David Hutchinson and his family eventually ended up in Albuquerque. He has been looking for work for months. Finally, he landed a job just this week with a contractor who installs fire suppression systems.

"If I wasn't so crippled, I'd be doing backflips," he said, pointing to the rod and pins in his forearm, an injury that ended his career in the U.S. Navy.

His wife, Chelsea, said she knows her husband is ready to put aside any pain because the prospect of their family being able to move from Joy Junction, the shelter where they have been staying since December, hinges on a regular income.

William and Elimar Roper are in the same boat. They and their four children have been at the shelter for about a year. William just landed a job in the kitchen and Elimar has graduated from the shelter's recovery program, which helps those addicted to drugs or alcohol.

"We're happy because we've upgraded from being homeless to something that can help us stabilize. It's the first step," Elimar Roper said.

William Roper served in the U.S. Army for nine years and did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. After the military, he worked as a janitor and then lost his job. The family's savings soon ran out, leaving them homeless.

The Kids Count report shows the percentage of children whose parents don't have secure employment has been increasing. That's more than one-third of children in each of the four states at the bottom of the Kids Count list.

"Growing up in poverty, it just has these terrible repercussions and you see these associations with much lower rates of high school graduation, lower performance overall in school, much lower rates of college attendance and the cycle perpetuates," said Curtis Skinner, director of Family Economic Security at the National Center for Children in Poverty.

Skinner said the center's research is showing a troubling trend in the aftermath of the recession: Poverty rates are rising in what used to be the middle class, in two-parent households and in families where parents have college educations.

While there is a lag in the Kids Count data, officials in New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada believe some of their numbers will start to turn around in the coming years thanks to investments in education, particularly pre-kindergarten programs.

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez has pushed for doubling pre-K funding and funneling more money to early literacy and high school graduation efforts.

"Clearly, doing things the way they've always been done hasn't worked for our kids," said Enrique Knell, a spokesman for the governor. "And reform efforts must include ending the practice of setting our children up for failure by passing them on to the next grade level when they can't read."

The well-being of their children has been the motivating factor for both the Hutchinson and Roper families. They want something better for their kids, and they say things are starting to turn around.

"Finally, being to the point of stabilizing and being able to get the kids out of this environment, that's a good feeling," Elimar Roper said.

___

Online:

Kids Count Data Book: http://www.aecf.org/MajorInitiatives/KIDSCOUNT.aspx

National Center for Children in Poverty: http://www.nccp.org/

New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty: http://nmpovertylaw.org/

Joy Junction: http://www.joyjunction.org/

___

Associated Press writers Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas and Cristina Silva in Phoenix contributed to this report.

___

Follow Susan Montoya Bryan on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/susanmbryanNM

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-06-24-Kids%20Count/id-cfbe91a8c30c4dd1a5729c2d15aaff9c

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Zimmerman jury of peers is jury of (mostly white) women (+video)

Zimmerman jury selection was completed in the racially charged case. Six women, five of them white, will decide whether the shooting death of Trayvon Martin constituted second-degree murder.

By Patrik Jonsson,?Staff Writer / June 20, 2013

Attorney Don West (l.) and jury consultant Robert Hirschhorn (r.) stand with George Zimmerman as potential jurors enter the courtroom for Zimmerman's trial in Seminole circuit court in Sanford, Fla., Thursday. An all-female and mostly white jury will decide whether the shooting death of Trayvon Martin constituted second-degree murder.

Gary Green/Orlando Sentinel/AP

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An all-female and mostly white jury will decide whether volunteer watchman George Zimmerman committed second-degree murder when he shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin, on a rainy Florida evening in February 2012.

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Debate around the high-profile case has swirled around the stereotyping of young black men, defense strategies to raise questions about Martin's character, crime scene photos that suggest a violent struggle took place, and furious courtroom arguments over whether to allow testimony by audio experts regarding who emitted a brief shriek in the background of a 911 call the moment before a shot rang out.

But now the mostly middle age and older female jury ? all white, except one Hispanic woman ? have to attempt to set aside what they have heard about the case and move beyond their own attitudes and beliefs in order to zero in on whether the killing constituted murder, as the state contends, or was a tragic result of legitimate self-defense.

The gender equation could become a major factor in a case that, at its core, touches on the lengths to which people can go to defend themselves, their homes, and their neighborhoods against threatening strangers ? and on whether defensive impulses sometimes simply hide racism.

?Women tend to be more reflexively opposed to the use of violence generally, and also be aware that most violence is perpetrated by men, for just or unjust reasons,? says Doug Keene, a jury consultant in Austin, Texas, who has been following the case.

The jurors include one woman who has been a victim of a crime and one woman who has previously been arrested. Some know intimate details of the case, another one claims to have barely heard about it before being picked for jury duty. The jury includes one young woman, several middle-aged women, and several retirees. While there were seven potential black jurors in the final round of 40 possible jurors, none were picked.

One of the women, the youngest, says she used the shooting in Sanford, Fla., as an example to her two adolescent kids not to go out at night.

Two of the four alternate jurors, however, are men, including a white man who says his teenage son wears hoodies, and a Hispanic man who is passionate about arm-wrestling.

The case has been portrayed as a tragic prism for the state of US race relations. One widely held suspicion is that the Sanford police would not have released, as they did Zimmerman, a black man who shot an unarmed white teenager in the same manner.

A special prosecutor indicted Zimmerman 44 days after the shooting in the wake of nationwide rallies by hoodie-wearing protesters. Martin was wearing a gray hoodie as he returned from a store with a bag of Skittles, an outfit that apparently helped Zimmerman peg the boy as ?suspicious? in a neighborhood that had endured a spate of petty thefts, carried out largely by young, black perpetrators.

Another potential legacy of this particular jury, experts say, could be how it comes down on the use of guns in self-defense outside the home, and how that principle applies to a situation in which a volunteer watchman follows someone they believe to be suspicious, as Zimmerman did. Lawyers questioned the jurors extensively about their views on guns and gun ownership.

One of the jurors said she used to have a concealed weapons permit, but let it lapse. Another one said her husband owns a gun. Prosecutors attempted to strike both jurors, but were denied.

No matter the age, race, gender or beliefs of the jurors, however, jury experts like Mr. Keene believe the panel will set aside the political and policy debates in order to focus on the last moments of Trayvon Martin?s life.

?I talk to a couple of thousand jurors a year, and 99 percent of them show an astonishing determination to discern the truth of a dispute,? Keene says. ?Their commitment to separate the wheat from the chaff is amazingly impressive, whether it?s a straightforward matter or the most incredibly complex and arcane dispute.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/mVWNgmMpOp4/Zimmerman-jury-of-peers-is-jury-of-mostly-white-women-video

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Filmmakers? group tries to reshape treaty that would benefit the blind (Washington Post)

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Developer Affairs: The agony and ecstasy of app stores - Talk Mobile

Back in the day, what mattered when picking a smartphone - be it a Nokia N-something, an aging Palm Treo, a BlackBerry with proper answer and end buttons, or a stylus-driven Windows Mobile brick - was the quality of the built-in applications. The features of the email program or the to-do application or whether or not the calendar integrated with Exchange were the driving forces.

Today smartphones are almost wholly dependent on third-party apps. These apps are the focus of half the commercials for every platform - they define what you can do with the smartphone or tablet. With how codependent modern smartphones and app developers are, we have to ask, what can the builders of these platforms to do better support the builders of these apps?

Each platform offers a different experience and set of features for developers. Some app storefronts are strictly curated while others are a free-for-all. They offer different mechanisms for advertising, in-app purchases, subscriptions, cloud services, and deployment. Some platform builders offer incentives, while others have the marketshare that the incentive is success.

Platforms need developers, and developers need platforms, but the relationship is a rocky one. How do we improve it for better platforms and better apps?

Users and developers alike can agree that having an app available regardless of platform is a great ideal. But at what cost?

Let's get the conversation started!

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